"Up North" Gawking (District 1 sightings)

How is the track work from Waterville to Northern Maine Jct. coming along? Will welded rail be coming this year and where is it going to be installed?

There's about 3 miles now up to timetable (25 mph) speed.

From what I hear, Readville to Waterville and Danville to Rigby is also in really good shape -- mostly/all up to timetable. And those sections weren't paid for by the state.

BostonUrbEx wrote:There's about 3 miles now up to timetable (25 mph) speed.

From what I hear, Readville to Waterville and Danville to Rigby is also in really good shape -- mostly/all up to timetable. And those sections weren't paid for by the state.

Readfield?

KSmitty wrote:

BostonUrbEx wrote:There's about 3 miles now up to timetable (25 mph) speed.

From what I hear, Readville to Waterville and Danville to Rigby is also in really good shape -- mostly/all up to timetable. And those sections weren't paid for by the state.

Readfield?

Whoops, yes. It'd be interesting if PAR was upgrading trackage all the way to Readville. New CSX interchange?

BostonUrbEx wrote:From what I hear, Readville to Waterville

Unless this happened within the last couple of days, it's still mostly 10. 120-127 is 25 and the rest is (was?) 10.

Danville east through downtown Auburn appears to be 10

690 wrote:

BostonUrbEx wrote:From what I hear, Readville to Waterville

Unless this happened within the last couple of days, it's still mostly 10. 120-127 is 25 and the rest is (was?) 10.

I'll see if I can get specifics but 114-ish to 127 might be 25 now?

9.4.15, 2:00 pm, west bound freight on track 2 past Mountain Junction led by: 615, 8955, 601, 313, 3005, 316
Not particularly long, lot of surries.
S

PORU heading east with a majority of empty paper cars. With the closing of Maine pulp & paper mills, is it possible there headed to "The Cloud", yard "17"? Any thoughts?

Thanks to Robert Selberg for the clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQ9zxeQ6n4" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Is the Woodland mill loading any boxcars these days or is everything going export through Eastport? Thanks.

roberttosh wrote:Is the Woodland mill loading any boxcars these days or is everything going export through Eastport? Thanks.

They still get cars in Woodland. Don't know how much, though.

Yeah' they've pretty much been getting inbound materials by rail from the get go, more interested in outbound boxcar shipments. Thanks!

380 is the Old Town Mill switcher. Was at NMJ a couple hours ago, shut down, no crew and not likely to get one soon.

Friday saw 2 WANM's a 38 car train that went up during daylight, and a second ~60 car train with 3 units, 321, 510 and another.
NMWA left with the 321, 510, UNK trio Saturday, leaving 380, 519, and 512 north. There are a ton of 'Keag cars, at Northern Maine, and with the locomotive situation up there currently it looks primed for a run up Mon/Tues/Weds this week.

There were ties laid out on both sides of Palmer Rd (just west of CPF80), track machines tied down at East Newport.

Majority of equipment, including trucks and on rail equipment is at NMJ. CM&Q has finished their work at the Junction and is waiting on Pan Am to cut in a few switches and repair a couple shaky yard tracks to streamline the interchange.

All quiet from Northern Maine Junction back to the deep south at Leeds today. No trains heard or otherwise observed on the 2 hour trip back. Unless we count idled 330 and 72 on the back alley at Waterville. Thus concluding this weekends Northward Gawking trip.

This morning WAPO and POWA met at Leeds around 8 or so, each got their paper to continue on right away, POWA got recrewed by Winthrop. Yesterday RUPO came down the branch with 30 or so cars, PORU went up with about 60, they met in Leeds also. Regarding the ties, they've got them laid out beyond MP 79, where the old Stetson siding was. Looked like some ballast had been dropped around Carmel.

512, 381 & 349 with 41 went to Keag today, after dropping 7 at Old Town.